The Impact of Instant Communications

We live in an increasingly complex world.  One area of our lives where this accelerating change is very visible and close to home is how we communicate with each other.  Since the ability to communicate is central to the formation and the function of any civilization or relationship, how this is happening and what it portends should be of interest to us all.  I see five trends occurring that are driving change right now: Just-In-Time Information, Artificial Memory Assistants, Distance Fuzziness, Faceless Communication, and Digital Thinking.

A quick look at history may help to see where I'm going with this.  As communication media developed, they allowed for totally new possibilities throughout history.  The ability to speak led to trade.  The ability to write led to kingdoms.  The ability to 'sign' documents with an identifiable signet led to empires.

Think for a moment about how radically the world changed with each of the following communication innovations:

The printing press Newspapers Postal services

Personal computers Email services The Internet

The telegraph The telephone The cellular phone

Each one of these brought about a huge shift in the way nations and people did their business, handled their relationships, and discovered information in general.  Something that may not be quite as apparent is how it changed the people themselves.  In the use of each medium listed above, the new communication method brought the persons using it closer to the raw information itself and that changed their attitudes and their behaviors.  Additionally, the innovations that had the deepest penetration into people's lives (meaning many more people used it or had access to it), are the ones that changed cultures the most.

It's happening again.  A wave of change in human and cultural behavior caused by the widespread availability and use of cell phones, smart phones, email, the Internet, and other similar devices and mediums is happening right now.  Our increasing ability to communicate instantaneously is having a tangible sociological effect.  My perspective on these trends can be summed up in five ideas:

Just-In-Time Information	Because we can find information just when we need it, less planning is required in our daily lives.  We don't have to check the Sunday newspaper to see the schedule of movies next week or call the theater directly like we did twenty years ago.  A quick check on a phone application or an Internet web page and we've got exactly what we need, right when we need it.  The result is that we as a culture are becoming far more likely to be spontaneous in our planing.  Indeed, I believe that this is resulting in the inability to plan without special training/coursework.
Artificial Memory Assistants	We can access so many different pieces of information so quickly, that we don't need to remember it ourselves at all - all we need to remember is where or how to find the information, not the information itself.  This is a huge shift in how human beings use their brains.  It frees up our head-space to memorize smaller chunks of data, while increasing the total volume of data we can access fairly quickly.  This effectively increases the amount of information we "know".  It also is a completely different set of memorization skills than our grandparents had.
Distance Fuzziness	Because we can access information wherever we happen to be at, there is a growing inability to form concrete ideas of distance.  The distance I am referring to can be geographical, cultural, or social.  Human beings have always had the tendency to put others into boxes that they can understand - this usually being shown in thinking and acting like everyone else has the same motivations and thought processes as we do.  Because the information flows to us and is not always clear as to where it came from, we are losing touch with the differences between cultures, places, and mindsets.  This is a double-edged sword, since it obviously reduces prejudice and bigotry (in the traditional forms anyway), but it exaggerates the tendency to think that we are all the same, when in fact, we are not.
Faceless Communication	There are certain skills which are developed by participating in communication via different mediums.  Instant and digital communication is leading to new skill sets being developed and old ones being lost.  For example, the art of letter-writing is one that is fast diminishing among the general population.  The ability to both send and read body language is slowly growing rarer as we spend more time talking verbally over long-distances and typing our messages.  On the other hand, the ability to communicate emotion and subtle innuendos via pure text is a growing and impressive skill.
Digital Thinking	We are slowly becoming bi-lingual in a fascinating way - able to communicate the old human way (analog) and in the new high-tech way (digital).  This is no trivial matter!  Being able to think in digital forms allows us to better interact with and understand the technology that we use every day.  Things work or they don't.  There is no gray area.  This on/off mentality is driving us to be less tolerant (or capable of perceiving) different mindsets.  Our grandparents would never concern themselves with how fast they could get information, because it just wasn't a factor in any of their mediums of communication, but today it is a very important aspect.

On one hand, many of these trends are driving us away from coexistence with others who are different.  Incivility is on the rise (if not rampant).  This could lead to more conflict between ideas and groups with different attitudes.  The solution is to be active in increasing our own tolerance and awareness of the problems.

On the other hand, humans are universally adaptable.  I love that about people!  Some of these changes are positive and some are negative, but overall I think it's all for the best.  These changes are very nice stepping stones to preparing large numbers of people for the Technological Singularity, whether they realize it or not!  That's a good thing.